Psychologist to discuss the science of race research

William H. Tucker, a member of the Bates class of 1967, will discuss topics connected with his award-winning book on the politics of race research, on March 28 at 7:30 p.m. in Chase Hall Lounge. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

“In some quarters the innate inferiority of race is still considered a proper scientific question even though a century and a half of concern with this issue has produced nothing of scientific value and has fostered considerable sociopolitical mischief,” Tucker wrote in the preface of his book. “The work traces the history of attempts to use racial differences as support for politically oppressive measures,” he said.

The Science and Politics of Racial Research, (University Illinois Press, 1994) won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, given annually to a work which contributes to an understanding of racism. Previous winners have included Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Louis Gates and Nadine Gordimer.

The book also received the American Political Science Association’s Ralph J. Bunche Award, awarded for the best scholarly work in political science to explore ethnic and cultural pluralism, and the Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America, for outstanding scholarship on the subject of intolerance.

Tucker is an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., where he joined the faculty in 1970. Tucker received his M.A. and Ph.D in psychology from Princeton University.

Tucker is an expert in the study of I.Q., intelligence and standardized testing in relationship to the problems of admissions, screening and placement. A Psychometric Fellow for three years at Princeton University –a position subsidized by Educational Testing Service to promote research in psychological tests and measurements– the majority of Tucker’s scholarship has been about psychometrics, rather than in it.

Tucker is a community activist and chaired the Affirmative Action Review Council for the city of Camden, and received the 1989 Rutgers College Public Service Award for his work. An active member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), he received the 1995 Distinguished Service Award from the Rutgers Council of AAUP.

He and two Rutgers colleagues created a new interdisciplinary offering for science, technology and society for the College of Arts and Sciences. At present, Tucker is writing on Sir Cyril Burt, the British psychologist who fabricated data on the inheritance of intelligence to support a highly selective system of education.